Winter fuel payment u-turn exposes flaws in SNP's universalism

The Herald Scotland

a day ago

Reeves maintained that circumstances have changed so much that the u-turn now represents a model of safe fiscal navigation. She was bound to claim that and I don't really care, so long as it allows a costly political mistake to be neutralised.
In fact, Reeves' statement indicated quite a few 'u-turns' which have headed the government in more recognisable Labour directions. Thank goodness for that too, I say. People voted for change and it needs to be more visible.
In the run-up to last week's by-election, lots of voters were still angry about Reeves' initial action on Winter Fuel Payments but not enough, as it proved, to change the outcome. Labour has had the sense to listen and respond with more positive messages.
The Chancellor was not just redistributionist in her commitments to health, education, housing and so on, which apply directly to England. She also spread serious investment around the nations and regions, on top of the record £52 billion to the Scottish Government.
Read more from Brian Wilson:
Her England-only funding will lead to lots of 'Barnett consequentials' for Scotland. Normally, these are taken with one ungrateful hand and recycled with the other as Scottish Government largesse, without a backward reference to where the money came from. Anas Sarwar will need to keep reminding them and this time more attention must be paid to whether the extra billions are used for priorities which generated them.
For example, every penny of 'consequentials' which flow from extra NHS spending in England should be spent on the NHS in Scotland, which has not always happened in the past. There should be complete transparency around this and how other Barnett money, on top of the £52 billion, is spent, and the value we get.
However convoluted the route to get here, Winter Fuel Payments now offer a perfect example of why 'universalism' is one pillar of nationalist rule which is long overdue for a 'u-turn', preferably under a new Holyrood administration which has the courage to take the argument on.
Under Reeves' plans, pensioners with income under £35,000 a year will get the Winter Fuel Payment of two or three hundred pounds. Those above that amount will not. The vast majority of people will regard that compromise as somewhere between fair and generous. I haven't heard anyone plead the case for restoring universalism.
Except, of course, in Scotland where the nationalists committed themselves to paying every pensioner £100, whether they need it or not. It was a political gimmick to demonstrate generosity, humanity etc in comparison to Whitehall, to be funded entirely from the Scottish budget (at the expense of something else).
Now the money will come from the Treasury and it will be up to Edinburgh to divvy it up. If they persist in giving £100 to pensioners above the £35,000 threshold, it will either be at the expense of the less well-off or an entirely pointless use of scarce resources, other than to justify 'universalism'.
Maybe that example could open the door to an overdue wider debate in Scotland around 'universalism' which opposition politicians tend to steer clear of because the assumption has developed that 'free things are popular' even if their effect is to widen wealth and attainment gaps, rather than narrow them.
In a world of unlimited resources, universalism may be a desirable concept, to be recouped through correspondingly high taxation. In the world we inhabit, on the other hand, it is a lofty-sounding device for transferring scarce resources from those who have least to others who are much better off.
That is a deception which the SNP have deployed to great advantage. Anyone who challenges it is accused of wanting to reintroduce 'means-testing' which carries the stigma of 1930s oppressors keeping money from the poor. In the 2020s, however, the case for 'means-testing' is to stop giving money to those who don't need it.
Another obvious example of this con-trick involves 'free tuition' which now plays a large part in bringing Scotland's universities to the point of penury, forcing large-scale redundancies, excluding Scottish students from hundreds of desirable courses and making our great seats of learning more dependent on decisions taken in Beijing and Seoul than Edinburgh.
'Universalism is one pillar of nationalist rule which is long overdue for a 'u-turn', preferably under a new Holyrood administration' (Image: Radmat) At some point, politicians must have the courage to call out this deception for what it is. The guiding principle that nobody should be prohibited by economic circumstances from going to university does not equate to 'universalism'. Quite the opposite is true. Universalism actually works against those who need far more support if the dial on educational attainment is ever going to move, which it hasn't done in Scotland under present policies and posturing.
If public money is to be better spent in Scotland to attack poverty and disadvantage while creating a thriving economy, then shibboleths will have to be challenged. The Scottish Government has never been short of money and certainly won't be now. The question of how it is spent and wasted should be the battlefield of political debate.
Another satisfactory 'u-turn' confirmed yesterday was recognition that nuclear power will be an essential component in the transition to a clean energy future. I wish the same obvious conclusion had been reached 20 years ago, when I was arguing for it within government, or could be recognised even now by the student politicians in Edinburgh.
With renewables and nuclear, Scotland really could have been a world leader on net zero. Without nuclear, it will still need fossil fuels for baseload for the foreseeable future with imports, rather oddly, regarded by some as morally superior to those extracted from the North Sea. Bring on another u-turn!
Brian Wilson is a former Labour Party politician. He was MP for Cunninghame North from 1987 until 2005 and served as a Minister of State from 1997 to 2003.